Deadline January 15, 2024 – Submit Proposals Here
For over four decades, Old Dominion University’s annual Spring Conference on the Teaching of Writing has invited secondary and post-secondary teachers from the Hampton Roads area and beyond to come together on ODU’s Norfolk Campus during the spring semester. Last year, we gathered to discuss how we strategically address our students’ literacy needs and work to bridge the gap between high school and college. This year, we will continue this conversation by inviting literacy educators to share their perspectives, pedagogies, and ways of adapting literacy instruction to meet the needs of our students and communities now and in the years to come.
We invite conference proposals that explore topics like:
- What knowledge, values, or beliefs motivate your approach to writing or reading instruction?
- What changes in student literacy behaviors have you noticed and how do you think those changes should be addressed in literacy instruction?
- What do you imagine the future of writing and reading instruction will be?
- What aspects of literacy instruction are fundamental to a humanist education and why?
- How do you balance learning to write, writing to demonstrate, and writing to learn in your classes? What kinds of conversations do you have with your students about this?
- What are the affordances and limitations of AI in the classroom, and how can educators navigate these aspects to enhance student learning and literacy skills?
- Have you developed practical assignments that embrace the use of AI in your classroom?
- How should our ideas about intellectual property change in an era of AI?
- How can we engage students in critical conversations about the tools they are using and how and why they are using them? How do we teach them to ethically use these tools?
- What aspects of literacy instruction are most vital to student success? How have institutions guided literacy instruction or anticipated changing literacy trends over the past few years?
Proposal Types – Submit Proposals Here
We invite you to submit a 150-word proposal for presentations, interactive workshops, and teacher-to-teacher roundtable discussions or panels that connect with the conference’s theme. This year we have added online presentation options as well, including asynchronous videos walking us through an activity or tool you use in your classes. Sessions are typically assigned to 45 or 75 minute time slots. Shorter presentation proposals are welcome and can be combined with others thematically. There is no limit on the number of presenters in a given workshop, panel, or roundtable, but please realize that the time limit remains the same regardless of the number of speakers, so time should be allocated accordingly. The final 10-15 minutes should be open for audience Q&A.
Accessibility
We endeavor to make our conference more accessible every year, and we ask that you make your presentation as accessible as possible to a wide range of bodies and minds. Presenters may consider passing out access scripts of their talks, describing the images in their PowerPoint presentations aloud, and using common language throughout–such simple moves can powerfully expand the reach of our work to people who see, hear, and express in different ways. Visit our website for more information and guidance.
